Instability versus inflexibility – and the case for changing the Conservative leadership challenge rules

The easiest course for 1922 Executive Committtee members to take is to put a decision off. Here’s why that should be avoided.

Our survey. Three out of five Party members will vote for the Brexit Party in European elections.

This finding is extraordinary, but there are at least four reasons why it could be on the money – and is a reliable guide to the trend.

Iain Dale: Why shouldn’t the Conservatives welcome back the Kippers?

Plus: Farage and my evenings. Edinburgh and my show. Notre Dame, fire, Macron – and recovery? And: Javid’s emotional intelligence.

Anger

Amidst verbal and actual violence, it is tempting to seek to shut down, say, Farage or Lammy altogether. But politics without anger would be impossible – and undesirable.

What proportion of Tory members will vote for the Brexit Party?

One association, in a safe Home Counties constituency, has found the answer is almost half.

WATCH: Farage launches his Brexit Party – “We the people still think that we’re a great country”

“Our leaders are happy to continue down the path of managed decline…we’re lions led by donkeys.”

Screwing Scruton

His sacking is more evidence, were it needed, of the tensions that tear at the Tory coalition – and threaten to render it unsustainable.

David Shiels: European Parliamentary elections would pose problems for the main parties. But especially for the Conservatives.

New polling for Open Europe shows that the Tories have special reason to be wary of this consequence of a long extension.

James Frayne: “Vote for change and Chuka” is laughable. The new party’s candidates come straight out of central casting.

Change UK are not the problem for the Conservatives. Rather, it is their own change narrative is ultimately weak.

Ashley Fox: May’s deal. We will be dragged into the disaster of European Parliamentary elections if it doesn’t pass.

We be explaining on the doorsteps why voters should send representatives to an institution we pledged to have left two months previously.

Robert Halfon: Mythbusting Common Market 2.0

It would increase our power to control freedom of movement, plus our laws and finances – and deliver on the referendum result.

Esther McVey: A loss of trust over Brexit could break our politics. And I shudder to think of the consequences.

This impasse is of Parliament’s creation. It is the failure of some MPs to honour the instructions of the British people which has led us here.

Can Labour out-Europhile The Independent Group with this second referendum pledge?

It rarely worked for the Conservatives when they tried to out-UKIP UKIP.

So you’ve decided to set up a new party. Eight tips from UKIP’s experience.

The SDP analogies are all wrung dry. But nobody has looked at what a more recent insurgency can teach the new outfit.

The Moggcast. He is “very concerned” delaying Brexit would allow “Tommy Robinson to win the European elections”.

“I don’t think a new Farage Party will be where the votes go.” Plus, Rees-Mogg’s view on Corbyn and May’s letters, and Tusk’s “confused” theology.